‘My mum watches my baby every week but doesn’t do any chores around the house’

“She’s very sensitive to being criticised, so I have to be careful about this…”

When *Gina and *Dave found out they were expecting a baby, their entire world changed. 

The British couple are incredibly busy; they work full-time, leaving them very little time to spend with each other, let alone a newborn. 

Since they both had a lot on their plates to begin with, they agreed they’d hire a nanny to help out. 

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This is what Gina wants to see when she gets home from work. Picture: iStock

Grandmother doesn’t clean after babysitting

At first, Gina wanted her mum to help watch their newborn daughter, Rose*, but things never panned out. 

“My mum was never able to commit to a specific childcare day, although I did ask her, back when we got our nanny - because she likes to travel a lot with her sister,” she told Mumsnet. 

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However, Rose is now nearly two years old, and the couple have enlisted a full-time nanny to help out around the house. Before she and her husband hired the nanny full-time, she asked her mother once again if she was able to assist in watching the baby.

“If she had been willing, we’d have gotten a part-time nanny or done nursery,” she said. 

At first, Gina understood that her mother’s travel schedule was so packed that she’d hardly be able to see her granddaughter, but two years later, her plans changed.

“My mum texts every week to ask when she can see my daughter,” Gina wrote. “Usually, [she] comes up one afternoon or morning per week to take her.”

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This is exactly what Gina originally hoped would happen, as she loves seeing Rose spend time with her grandmother. 

However, it also means that the nanny she hired is out of work for the day. 

“This means our nanny gets paid time off, half a day a week or sometimes more (since it isn’t her choice not to work),” she complained. “I find this annoying at times, as it means we’re overpaying, but I’ve had to make peace with it for the trade-off of my daughter having time with her grandmother.” 

Despite this setback, Gina was still happy that her mother was spending quality time with Rose. 

But it didn’t take long for her happy feelings to start slipping after returning home from work and seeing how her mother left the house. “On the days when my mum takes [Rose], she does no cleaning at all,” Gina lamented. “Meaning the house looks like a total bomb has gone off when I get home from work.”

In Gina’s eyes, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect her mother to “clean up dirty plates” and remove the “food on the floor” and other “normal toddler stuff” before Gina returned home. It’s something the full-time nanny always did, so why shouldn’t her mother carry the load, too? “Or should I just be grateful for the (unsolicited) childcare?” she asked. 

“My mum also comes regularly on weekends, but there’s only so much we can have her round before it gets a bit much for my husband,” she continued. 

But Gina is apprehensive about confronting her mother about the bomb site she leaves in her wake. “My mum is very sensitive to being criticised, so I have to be careful about this,” she said. 

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“Grow up and tell your mum not to leave a mess”

Despite Gina’s mum’s dislike for criticism, the majority of people on Mumsnet agreed Gina needed to bite the bullet and tell her mum to stop being so messy. 

“Grow up and tell your mum not to leave a mess,” read a comment. 

“I'd tell your mum that you can't cope with this because of the mess,” someone suggested. 

But the thought of asking her mother to clean after watching Rose for free was out of the question for others. 

“I would just suck it up and tidy up myself when I get home from work,” a person said. “My mum used to collect my daughter from school one day each week and look after her until I got home, and I would never have dreamt of expecting her to clear up.”

“Your mum is there for granny time, not chores,” said another. 

As an alternative, some people suggested asking the nanny to clear up the mess when she came back to work. “Can’t the nanny clean up?” read a comment. “Tell nanny that she's not regarded as the cleaner at all, and she's still onto a winner regarding paid hours,” another agreed. 

But that idea was quashed immediately - why should the nanny clean up after a mess she didn’t create? 

“Good nannies are like gold dust, don’t lose yours by pissing her off,” read a comment. “Messing her about last minute shows no respect for her role at all.”

*Names have been changed

Originally published as ‘My mum watches my baby every week but doesn’t do any chores around the house’